exexexexex

ughhh jealousy is evil. it's all consuming. it makes even the sanest of us jumpy, paranoid, ugly. it makes me think and believe the worst. it takes form as passive aggression, straight out aggression, sleepless nights, an extra drink i probably didn't need it, a pack of cigarettes i definitely didn't need. it's something i think i have under control--everything is smooth and shiny and looks just right but then. something happens. a text, a comment, a random thought, and the surface cracks and crumbles to reveal a red, burning rash beneath. the smooth and shiny is thin and brittle 

--

my boyfriend is still friends with his ex. they talk fairly regularly. i know this because sometimes i'll see her name pop up every now and then when he gets a text. i know this because he's told me they're still friends. i've confronted him about it--told him i wanted to make sure he didn't still have feelings for her, told him i wanted to understand the edges and boundaries of their current relationship. he said the right things to make me feel better. and yet.

after my ex and i broke up i wanted nothing to do with him. i had never felt closer with anyone than i had with him and when it ended--that sharp, sudden, shock--i couldn't imagine having any sort of relationship with him that wouldn't softly reek of what we once shared. i still can't.

my boyfriend's done nothing wrong. i need to trust him because why wouldn't i. but jesus it's hard. and recently i've been fantasizing about seeing some text from his ex that would validate all my awful suspicions and allow that frenetic energy inside my brain and my veins to take a damning shape and morph into something real.

--

jealousy shines a bright light on my insecurities, my bits and pieces where i feel less than. i'm smart but i don't know enough about the right sorts of things. i'm sexy but it's not kinky or adventurous. i'm funny but it's not the same.

when i confronted him about my feelings, my boyfriend said he invited his ex to his birthday party but she didn't want to come because she thought i'd hate her. i don't know why he told me that. perhaps to make me feel better? so that i'd know she knows about me and views me as some sort of...adversary? i've thought a lot about the comment and this small opening into their relationship. i wonder why she assumes i'd be so petty and i find it interesting that she placed the blame of not attending the party on my perceived hatred and discomfort rather than hers. i don't generally hate people i've never met and know very little about--even if they did used to fuck my boyfriend. i wonder if we'll ever meet.

--

i don’t ignore emotions; jealousy receives my agonizing indulgence and analysis for better or worse. i hate that it's grounded in...nothing solid, that's for sure. just my own messy conjectures. i hate that there's no one to blame for my feelings except myself. i hate that this is something i'll have to continue managing because i can only beg for the same reassurance from my boyfriend so many times before it becomes unbearable. i hate that i'm 99 percent certain there's nothing to worry about but i'm so hung up on that 1 percent.

with clarity and solid mindedness i can remind myself that i'm a pretty cool human being and i'm in a pretty cool relationship with someone who likes me and respects me and all that jazz. if anything is going on, it'll find its way out--it almost always does. in the meantime it's much less exhausting to not worry.

reflections on my twenty-third year

My birthday is coming up in a few weeks and instead of focusing on the awful bits (namely that I'm working the same job with but now with more hatred and frustration) and feeling like another year of my life simply wiled away, I am going to reflect on all that happened month by month. Events and personal growth and all that. Perhaps after I've done this I'll still feel like it was a wasted year but the unexamined life etc etc. Trigger warning: this is boring.

2013
October
Boy, it got off to a truly awful start. About a week before my birthday my boyfriend of over 2 years broke up with me. It wasn’t totally unexpected but unexpected enough. I have a vivid memory of saying to him, through dripping tears and a sloppy voice, but it’s my birthday next week!! Anyway. In an act of sisterly love, my big sis planned a last-minute trip up to Boston to celebrate with me. That morning at work my boss yelled at me for a small mistake I made the previous day. It turned into one of those conversations about a lot of things I’ve done wrong and other (small! miniscule!) things I had done to disappoint her and that sorta thing is really the true mark of passive aggression. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how absurd the whole ordeal was, and how shitty it made me feel. I take it as a real badge of honor that I didn’t cry in her office. Afterwards a couple coworkers took me out to lunch so I could bitch about it. That evening I picked my sister up from the bus station and we went out to a fancy dinner in my neighborhood.

I spent most of the month as an open wound. The pain from a breakup is like biting your tongue over and over again—the hurt is exquisite, sharp, and deep but there’s very little to sooth it. A few weeks after the breakup I went to his apartment to perform the requisite act of “here’s your stuff” and that was the last time I saw him.

Near the end of the month I developed a burning crush on a man I saw at the DTX platform every day after work. Slight, bespectacled, bearded. I still see him sometimes and it still makes me feel light.

November

I think by November I had stopped crying every day. I organized a big event at work that went well. A friendship between me and the intern with my program began to solidify. By this time it had been a year since I started working at my job and I really started to feel the itch to get out. I had a nice Thanksgiving? I dunno I guess I was just slogging through the days. Ah, I think I may have masturbated for the first time since the breakup. This, I thought, was a big step toward moving on…

December

Still ticking off each month as 1 2 3 since the breakup. I went to Craigie on Main for the first time with a good college pal and ate one of the best meals of my life. Six courses of food inspired by the Alsace region of France, a bottle of white wine and it was maybe the best $180 I’ve ever spent. A few evenings I trekked through the snow with an old work pal to a dark and cramped Irish pub and we got drunk off of beer and whiskey. I traveled home for Christmas and the New Year and felt recharged.

2014
January

Hoo boy. For whatever reason ($$ presumably) my office has their holiday party in January. I got wildly drunk and hooked up with a coworker. It was an awful, sloppy mess. We hooked up in the playground in the Boston Common (lol), took a cab back to my place, and then….merp. No need to go into details; I just tried to type them out and it was atrocious. I also wrote about it in an earlier blog post. So! This incident made work a bit difficult for a little while but I certainly do not regret it.

By January I was (obviously) as horny as a thirteen year old boy. It was exhausting, sizing up dudes everywhere I went. The T was a meat market. I realized how easy it is to spot a man’s bulge through his pants when he’s standing in front of me on the train; it made my commute a lot more interesting. My holiday hookup did little to satisfy my needs as a woman and we had a silent mutual agreement to never speak of it or repeat our actions so I was left to my own devices. Unbelievably, I still don’t own a vibrator :-/

February

February was bleak. Weather wise, life wise. Beginning Middlemarch was my only solace. I cried over my ex on President's day, probably the first time I had done so since November.

March

Oof March was also bleak. I don’t usually take much stock in horoscopes but each one I read said Libras would have a tough month because Mars was in retrograde (wut!). I found out my ex moved to Brooklyn and the news knocked the wind out of me. I felt like my life was at a standstill and going nowhere but he picked up everything and moved to the city he’s wanted to live in since forever. I spent most of this month stewing in self-pity. I started this blog.

(And while it’s not really a month-by-month thing, I spent a lot of time thinking about loneliness, friendship, and my relationship. I spent a lot of time alone. Sometimes I was OK with it; sometimes I wasn’t. I went on a lot of walks and got to know my neighborhood. I finally started to feel at home in Boston. These, I think, are good things.)

April

Maybe April was a turning point. I visited a few good friends from college in LA and had an incredible time. I thought I would hate the city, but I truly enjoyed it and it was so nice catching up with my pals. Must mention that I’m (pretty sure) we went to Bryan Singer gay sex party. And at this party an unbelievably hot and muscular man in a speedo made out with me for about 45 seconds. Must also mention that right before he kissed me I had been snacking on Chex Mix.

Later in the month, when I returned home a little buzzed after a few drinks with a friend, I checked my ex’s twitter feed and found out that he had an OKCupid account. Fuck this, I thought, and then immediately signed up for OKCupid, created a profile, and answered roughly one million questions about my opinions and worldview and all that. I spent the rest of the month obsessing over the site. I went on my first date the last day of April.

May

My mother and sister came to Boston for my cousin’s college graduation from UMass Amherst. This is our family’s youngest cousin and I got sentimental watching him receive his diploma. His college band, Pocket Lint (!!), performed for the last time at a house party and after much back and forth and drama with transportation, my sister and I went to the party. They played in the basement of a dirty and dingy house; drunk college grads took glugs from bottles of vodka, wine, and growlers of beer. I wish I could describe the experience better than saturated college but oh well. That's what it was.

But lo, the highlight of the month was my first date with my current boyfriend. Our first bit of interaction was a little awkward--we were in a crowded bar, we couldn't find seats and at 6'4" he towers over me so anything I said to him had to be repeated after he bent down to my level. But we found a spot at the bar and despite all that initial fuss I was at ease around him and a I felt a sort of warm reassurance that we'd have a good night.

June
June is a blur. The only focus I can muster is Aidan. After our first few get togethers and hookups it became obvious we liked one another, that we were exclusive. (I should mention [to whom?? w/e] I am still at my godawful job and I am always sad and depressed and downtrodden about this.)

Right before I left for a big family vacation, we stamped official names on our relationship. It was inevitable but it still felt...unnatural. With my previous relationship we had a solid friendship under our belts before things got ~romantic~ With Aidan, we were strangers and then very quickly we weren't. It took a little while to comfortably settle back into the girlfriend role.

July

Big family vacation. Slowly starting to apply to more jobs. Getting to know Aidan.

August
Slowly starting to apply to more jobs. Getting to know Aidan.

September

Ah so here we are. The last few months were pretty uneventful (and I started to feel pretty lazy). Still applying for jobs but they're few and far between and I've heard back from NO ONE. 

Soo...

After this lil memory experiment (or whatever I just did!) what do I think of my twenty-third year?? It was perhaps the most introspective year I've had, what with being single (for most of it) and having so few friends (for all of it). Spent a lot time by myself and in my head. And I feel good about that! It certainly wasn't perfect or exciting and there's still so so much about my life that makes me anxious and frustrated but. This past year wasn't wasted or wiled away WOW THANK GOD.

As a gift for reading through this mess, you are now allowed to follow me on Twitter--hey thanks!

On trust

Starting in the pit of my belly, it oozes its way through my bloodstream, through my organs, muscles, tendons, fat, leaving all of my messy insides feeling hot and prickly. My breath becomes shallow. I stare off at something, anything-- an old piece of mail on the chair beside me, the two books on my shelf that need to be switched so as to keep them in alphabetical order, the shoes on a stranger sitting across from me on the train. I've never been good at hiding emotions on my face. Unhappiness paints my eyes with unease and my mouth with disappointment. You will not see me smile. You will not hear me speak unless spoken too. But I'm silently begging you to ask me what's wrong so that I can mumble back don't worry about it.

My mind is a tangled mess; I'm too impatient to work through the knots and besides, it's easier to let things worsen than make them better. Each new tangle results in a new sludgy thought. It's throbbing now, pushing up against my skull and I want to tear at my hair, my flesh, I want to claw my way through anything to find some relief. I want I want I want.

Yes woman

One of my closest friends at work often says I'm too quick to say yes. This is in regard to a few different scenarios: when my boss asks me to do something I don't have to do (I can't say no; I never say no; I'm a goddamn pushover) and getting drinks after work. I will always and bitch I mean always be down for a drink at 5:00 p.m. sharp.

When she says it relating to drinks, she does so with a smile and a clipped laugh -- playful but not quite free of judgment. And my gut sort of falls. Is that supposed to mean I'm too available? Is it so bad to be available....always....? I like to have a good time, man.

I recently went out for margaritas with a coworker whom I don't usually spend one-on-one time with. And it wasn't awkward because of tequila! Also because complaining about a job is an endless waterfall of conversation.

I've started dating someone but I'm still a yes woman. I still have all the time in the goddamn world so yeah what the hell I'll get a drink or three with you. I don't think that's so awful. You should be so lucky to find yourself on the receiving end of my weirdo anything goes drunk conversation. You really should.

#lifehack

Man, I love these #2ingredientlifehacks:

Find a friend who owns a good sturdy ax (make sure the ax is lightweight with a carbon steel head and hickory handle--this makes for the swiftest and smoothest of swings) and have her chop off your fingertips just below the first knuckle in a single blow. Et voila! No more painful hangnails or red and raw cuticles.

Life changing

If you stand while you work you’ll live 30% longer If you stand while you work you’ll increase your metabolism and improve your posture If you stand while you work you’ll grown an average of 3 inches every 5 years If you stand while you work you won’t feel hungry or thirsty but always nourished, something warm and tingly will always nourish you If you stand while you work you’ll reach your target weight If you stand while you work your skin will smell faintly of a just-bloomed rose and you won’t need glasses anymore If you stand while you work your mind will stay so clear you’ll forget your name, forget whom you love and who loves you, forget sadness and anger and disappointment, forget to blink, enter nirvana and never perish Please consider standing while you work.  

Rambling

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be lonely versus being alone. Admittedly not such a unique thought but what are you gonna do. I'm alone for a good chunk of my waking hours and for 100 percent of my sleeping hours. Evenings and weekends are often a blank slate waiting for me to etch in some last minute plan. Nothing spectacular--a walk in a park, a walk down the main street in my neighborhood, staying in and reading a book. I don't know. I feel OK about doing stuff alone but it's mostly because if I didn't I'd just steep in my own juices sitting in bed, watching Daria.

I vacillate from feeling righteous about being alone to feeling weak about being lonely. When I'm righteous the world is mine. Doesn't anyone realize the greatest gift they can give themselves is to be comfortable alone? To need no other bodies and minds with whom to interact? When I'm lonely though my skin feels itchy and my breath quickens. I don't have any friends. That's about the only line running through my brain.

I'm not so sure what makes the difference? Does loneliness suffocate me on an "off" day? Perhaps I'm not as comfortable with myself as I'd like to presume. The matter of choice certainly comes into play--it's easy to relish an evening in when I've turned down other invitations or if I'm just "in the mood" to be alone. When I'm alone and I simply don't want to be but there's no other option...I guess that's when I become frantic for another body to share space with.

I recently joined OKCupid and it doesn't exactly help matters; the place reeks of loneliness. Everyone's doing the Internet equivalence of shuffling their feet, writing a message cuz what the hell that's why I'm here, then radio silence. Or a message back! And then a terrible or at best mediocre date. The feet shuffling kills me.

And I always feel a slight hint of shame creeping up around the edges when I sign on and read the messages, browse the matches, and judge judge judge judge judge judge. My self consciousness fires off in a million directions--when was the last time I was on? I can't look at this guy's profile again or he'll know I'm interested (??? yes I know that's the point ughhh) why do I sign on so much? I should be signing on every other day (impossible). And it's fruitless so far. I've barely messaged anyone. Someone's profile was pretty impressive (genuinely funny, good taste in writers, smart guy) but I'm scared to message him because I don't quite find him attractive. So now I am (have always been?) a shallow bitch. Cool!

(I'm constantly reminding myself I still felt a heavy loneliness even when I dated someone--a wet and saggy security blanket I carry around like a child)

Last week I read Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself  and there was a lot of talk about fiction as a remedy for loneliness:

"There's a certain set of magical stuff that fiction can do for us...one of them has to do with the sense of, the sense of capturing, capturing what the world feels like to us, in the sort of way that I think that a reader can tell 'Another sensibility like mine exists.' Something else feels this way to someone else. So that the reader feels less lonely."

No doubt I underlined and starred those wise words of DFW. I've garnered a new fervor for reading over the past few months and I imagine it wouldn't have happened if I had less free time spilling out all over the place that needed sopping up. I turned to Middlemarch for comfort and relief when I felt helpless and just plain sad. Feasting on Geek Love during my weekend afternoons when I was just plain bored.

Middlemarch was a turning point book for me, which seems sorta contrived since there's a lot of new hype around it, but whatever. It was the first time I gasped while reading because yeah my everyday thoughts and emotions and my fucking traits, which always seem like a heady blend of mundane and intensely personal and snow flake-y, were be translated into sentences so eloquently and effortlessly constructed. I had to take a break from reading and suck in a few good gulps of oxygen, letting it seep out slowly. It does make a person feel less lonely.

Temporarily, though.

But then, I guess if I really think about it, if I really put my back into it, everything we do is a temporary fix to stave off loneliness.

Oh well.

Party over where?

I'm trying not to let a pity invitation crawl under my skin and vibrate through my bloodstream but it's forcing my stomach into a mild nausea and feeding energy into my fingers as they fly through my hair and around my nails.  

You are an afterthought.

It's one of the lowest and darkest things you can be. Especially when you first think an invitation is sincere, that people really do want to spend some of their precious free time with you. You're light in your steps and the friendless, loveless world you've created for yourself doesn't seem so prickly-grey anymore. But hold up. You find out your friend spoke with the person who invited you and she probably used the words should and why not.

I started watching The Rich Kids of Beverly Hills and like most reality TV shows stuffed with over the top and out of this world characters you're prepared to hate and mock and pity, after the third episode (if you make it that far and I almost always do) they end up being not so terrible, kind of funny, and a hell of a lot smarter than you originally gave them credit for. In one episode the billionaire's daughter throws a pool party and she and her friends spend a fair chunk of time ruminating on whom they should invite. Only close friends. People they trust. People they can laugh easily around. They have names for those on the outskirts who show up to events by way of third-string invitation: Groupers. Bottom feeders. Take your pick with the phrase but either way it's ugly.

This show is ridiculous and meaningless but I'll be damned if I didn't identify with that sloppy grouper the pretty ones snark at. And anyway who are those people who are always invited to things?? Regardless of the friends I have, the people I date, the folks I spend time with and share the same air with, I rarely receive these thing invitations. It usually doesn't bother me to tag along as the "Oh we haven't met, I came with so-and-so, you've got a great place by the way" party goer but today my feelings are an exposed, raw nerve and even the lightest touch is blinding.

I accepted that pity invite and I'm leaving in an hour and I look pretty damn good and after a drink or two (or three or whatever) hopefully I'll forget that I allowed myself to indulge these thoughts.

I dreamed a dream

I had a dream last night that stuck with me. A dream where I was getting to know someone in a way that if I had slept a little longer, if my brain synapses had fired off the right connections, would have surely evolved into something romantic. It left a quiet, soft warmth in the pit of my belly.

There's a guy (in real life) whom I see at the Downtown Crossing T stop fairly regularly at the same spot (the platform near the end of the train going toward Forest Hills) and around the same time (5 p.m). I find him achingly cute and have for the longest time--maybe since October? There's something...endearingly dainty about him. He's not so tall, very slender, always well put together, always wearing the most beautiful glasses. I imagine he's the proprietor of some "Aristanal [insert any noun] Shoppe." We stand next to one another on that platform enough so that I never worry it'll be the last time I see him; and I stand alone enough so it's always a shock to my system, a flip of my stomach when he walks up next to me. One time I swore he craned his neck to watch me get up from my seat and walk out of the train. I think he is the first person I allowed myself to be attracted to, to have a little meaningless, shallow crush on, after my ex and I broke up.

So anyway this dream was about him.

I sat next to him on the T, struck up a conversation and enjoyed easy, natural talk. He was going to a bar I was all too familiar with and would I like to join him? A yes couldn't have poured out of my mouth any quicker. Then, as dreams are wont to do, all of the sudden we were somewhere else. We were already friends, loose-lipped and giddy. Wherever it was we were alone and I desperately wanted him to kiss me, or fuck me, or give me any easy excuse to press our flesh together. It didn't happen, but I wasn't disappointed because the company of this new-found friend was enough for now.

And that was it. This dream makes me feel comfortable and content, perhaps only because my subconscious acted as it should have: playing out a sweet short story in the grey slimy mess of my brain what I hopelessly cannot play out in life. I'm pleasantly surprised there's not even a tinge of lonely and pathetic lurking behind those feelings; their swallowing blueness will take hold of me some other day I suppose.

Maybe this dream is a prophecy and I'll talk to him one day. Maybe I'll find out he's terrible, married, gay, or all three. Maybe I'll just nurse this grade-school crush and do nothing except steal glances at him on the train and remember how I feel right this very moment.

Wahhhhhh

One of my friends at work recently told me that I give up too quickly. And she is (unfortunately) 100 percent correct. Excuses are so easy to pick up and regardless of how big or small they are, or how many I find along my way (so many!) they fit perfectly in my pocket. But I should really empty out my pockets! I keep saying I want to write and yet.....I'm not writing. I started this blog bored at work thinking it would become some sort of saving grace and yet........less than a week after I started I more or less stopped. I know I could easily find freelance work or even write little things for a journal I once interned for and yet.........I sit on my ass and do nothing. Ugh! I'm the worst!

I decided last week that if I'm still at my job in June I'm going to quit regardless of whether or not I have a new one.This job is killing me, making me miserable, etc etc. If I absolutely have to find something, I will. If I'm comfortable enough I know I'll never be as fully motivated as is necessary. And surprisingly, day after agonizing day, I am comfortable enough. So I guess I need to lose my source of income for that motivation. Yeesh.

I have loads of free time--a nice by-product of having only 2 friends and no hobbies and no boyfriend/hookup/what have you--and instead of shamefully browsing Buzzfeed and crafting some fairly shitty tweets, I could be writing for money! Or at this point writing for free let's be real :-(

The sun's out, it's kinda sorta warm, and I've got my whole life ahead of me.